Speakers

Abhay Deol

Abhay Deol

Actor

Indian film actor Abhay Deol, often hailed as a “thinking actor” in the Hindi movie circles, has appeared in popular films such as Dev D, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.Read More »

Adora Svitak

Adora Svitak

Child prodigy

Seeing Adora walk down the street, you might not think that the seemingly typical thirteen-year-old is a published author, activist, accomplished speaker and one of the world’s youngest teachers.Read More »

Adrianna Svitak

Adrianna Svitak

Poet, Pianist

With a wide range of passions including music, poetry, and art, Adrianna Svitak studies piano and violin as well as singing. Her musical interests range from Michael Jackson to Mozart, Beethoven to Beyonce. Nine years of practice have led to awards from events, including the Seattle Young Artists’ Festival, the Performing Arts Festival of the Eastside, the Music Teachers’ National Association and the Bach Festival competition. In violin, her accomplishments include being named Concertmistress for the Redmond Junior High Honors Orchestra as well as the Junior All-State Orchestra.Read More »

Aisha Chaudhary

Aisha Chaudhary

Inspirational Artist

Seventeen year-old Aisha Chaudhary was born with an immune deficiency disorder and overcame a predicted life expectancy of only one year to have become an accomplished artist today. Despite a serious lung disease called Pulmonary Fibrosis, her persistent optimism, extraordinary maturity in the face of impossible odds, and calm perspective on life’s challenges have been an inspiration to many.Read More »

Alexander Tsiaras

Alexander Tsiaras

Techno artist

Alexander is a renowned technologist, artist, journalist and author. As an artist and technologist, he has participated in developing scientific visualization software to enable him to “paint” the anatomy using volume data. Read More »

Amar Hanspal

Amar Hanspal

Digital Portfolio Designer

As a leader, Amar Hanspal builds teams that empower everyone to imagine, design and create a better world. Read More »

Amar Sen

Amar Sen

Shadowgrapher

Amar Sen's devotion to the arts has brought him fame for various specializations at different stages in his life; now the world knows him for a number of things including but not limited to singing, acting, magic, graphic arts, poetry and obviously his pet art, handShadowGraphy. The field of performance knows him better for his hardcore professionalism at whatever he does.Read More »

Amish Tripathi

Amish Tripathi

Author

Described as the ‘Paulo Coelho of the East’ by Business World and a ‘People’s author like Jeffrey Archer’ by The Telegraph, Amish’s unique combination of crackling story-telling, religious symbolism and profound philosophies have made him an overnight publishing phenomenon.Read More »

Anand Agarawala

Anand Agarawala

Interface designer

Anand Kumar

Founder, Super 30

Anand Kumar is ushering in a revolution in the hinterlands of India by equipping youth to dream big through his education initiative ‘Super 30’ in Patna, Bihar. In 1994, he was admitted to Cambridge University but was unable to afford it after his father, a low paid postal employee, passed away. In the last eight years of ‘Super 30’, Kumar, now a noted mathematics teacher, has coached a phenomenal 212 students, most first generation learners from rural, poor backgrounds, to pass the joint entrance test of the Indian Institute of Technology. Time Magazine selected ‘Super 30’ in the Best of Asia 2010, and Discovery Channel made a documentary film on ‘Super 30’. Read More »

Anil Ananthaswamy

Anil Ananthaswamy

Author, New Scientist journalist

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist in London. He has worked at the magazine in various capacities since 2000, most recently as deputy news editor. He has also contributed to National Geographic News and The Independent (UK). He studied electronics,electrical and computer engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (Bachelor of Technology), and the University of Washington, Seattle (Master of Science), and worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training as a journalist at the University of California Santa Cruz. He is the author of The Edge of Physics, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (published as The Edge of Reason by Penguin, India).Read More »

Anu Aga

Anu Aga

Director, Thermax Limited

Ms. Anu Aga is on the Board of Thermax Limited, the leading Indian player in energy and environment management. She retired as Chairperson of the company in October, 2004.Read More »

Anupam Mukerji

Anupam Mukerji

The Fake IPL Player

Anupam is best known as the man behind India's biggest viral sensation - The Fake IPL Player. He has gone on to start Pitch Invasion as an alternate, interactive online live cricket commentary platform. An entrepreneur for 9 years in areas ranging from sports documentaries, marketing consulting, marketing communications, online social media marketing, and sports media, Anupam is also the author of a best-selling novel, and a general prankster. Read More »

Anupama Chopra

Anupama Chopra

Film Critic, Author

Anupama Chopra is a film critic and book author. She has written about the Hindi film industry since 1993. Film Companion, a YouTube channel, is her latest love letter to the movies. She is the film critic for Hindustan Times and NDTV 24/7 and a contributing editor to Vogue (India). She has anchored ‘The Front Row’ on Star World and 'Star Verdict' on Star Plus. Anupama also presented and scripted a weekly film review show called Picture This on NDTV 24/7. Her work has been published extensively in India Today, India's largest English language magazine. She has also written about Bollywood for various international publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety and Sight & Sound.Read More »

Anusha Yadav

Anusha Yadav

Photographer, Founder: Indian Memory Project

Anusha Yadav is a documentary photographer based in Mumbai. She is also the Founder of Indian Memory Project – an online project that traces a personal history of India through pictures found in family archives. It aims to become India's first open repository of a visual history made by its own people. Read More »

Arpit Mohan

Arpit Mohan

Co-founder, Gharpay

It’s neither jamming on the flute nor building India’s first humanoid that truly defines Arpit Mohan; it’s the drive to solve hard real-world problems. Today, this recent graduate from BITS-Pilani spends his time as a co-founder at Gharpay, applying technology to transform the way people transact online.Read More »

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar

Poet and executive

Arun Kumar was nominated, on October 4, 2013, by President Obama to the position of Assistant Secretary of Global Markets and Director General of the US and Foreign Commercial Service. Read More »

Arunachalam Muruganantham

Arunachalam Muruganantham

Innovator, entrepreneur

Arunachalam Muruganantham of Jayaashree Industries designed, created, tested and implemented a sanitary napkin-making machine that operates on a small scale.Read More »

Arvind Gupta

Arvind Gupta

Toymaker, innovator, science educator

Science educator Arvind Gupta uses simple toys to teach. A graduate from IIT Kanpur (1975 batch), Arvind Kumar Gupta took a year’s study leave from TELCO (in 1978) to work with the grassroots village science teaching programme for children in the tribal district of Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh. While there, he developed many useful low-cost teaching/science teaching aids using locally available materials. The possibilities of using ordinary things for doing science and recycling modern junk into joyous products appealed immensely to children. Arvind Gupta’s first book, Matchstick Models and other Science Experiments, was translated into 12 Indian languages by various Popular Science groups and sold more than half a million copies. Gupta has conducted workshops in over 2000 schools and has won many national and international awards. Read More »

Asima Ensemble

Asima Ensemble

Vocal and Percussion Ensemble

Asima is a boundary-breaking vocal and percussion ensemble from Trivandrum, Kerala. The word “asima” in sanskrit means "beyond boundaries", and the ensemble combines elements from India's rhythmic and melodic systems with harmonic traditions of western music. Read More »

Babar Ali

Babar Ali

Youngest headmaster

He was called the “youngest headmaster in the world” by BBC in October 2009, at the age of 16. Babar Ali is an Indian student and teacher from Murshidabad, West Bengal. The school that he runs is an outdoor school and counts a total of 10 teachers - all of them students at nearby school or college - who volunteer to teach. There are no tuition fees, thus making it affordable for the poor in this economically deprived area and thereby helping increase literacy rate there. In 2009, Babar Ali won a prize from the program Real Heroes of the Indian English news channel CNN IBN for his work and was awarded the NDTV Indian of the year award. UNTOLD STORY: Babar Ali is now studying in his first year at Berhampur Krishnath College towards a BA (Honors in English). In the afternoons, he teaches students in the school he founded in his parents’ backyard in Murshidabad.Read More »

C Mallesham

C Mallesham

Inventor

Making the adage, 'necessity is the mother of all inventions', ring true is C Mallesham, who, moved by his mother's suffering, innovated an automatic loom, that is also reviving the dying tradition of the Pochampally silk sari weaving. Laxmi Mallesham is now perhaps the happiest mother in Sharjipet, a village of handloom weavers in Andhra Pradesh. She, and many women weavers, is now free from pain and stress that consumed her for hours on the manual loom.Read More »

Charles Ma

Charles Ma

Bharatnatyam dancer

Charles Ma was initiated into the sacred world of Bharatanatyam under Guru Smt.Vidya Shimladka. His dance stands out for its distinct individuality, personality and control. Charles is also a contemporary choreographer and teacher. He believes that dance is sacred and the essence of his dance is a deepened spirituality and respect for its tradition and aesthetics.Read More »

Christopher Kirchhoff

Christopher Kirchhoff

Crisis Investigator

Christopher Kirchhoff works as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kirchoff authored the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Report and co-wrote the U.S. government historical non-fiction, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," coined “the Iraq Pentagon Papers” by the New York Times.Read More »

Darren Abrahams

Darren Abrahams

Tenor, Naciketa

Darren Abrahams is a singer and performer who has appeared in opera all around the world, working for such companies as the ROH, ENO, Scottish Opera, WNO, Wexford Festival Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, American Opera Projects and the Young Vic. Darren regularly premieres new works and has helped develop new operas for The Royal Opera, Scottish Opera, Complicite, The Opera Group, Opera Circus, the Batignano Festival and the Brian Irvine Ensemble in places as diverse as Belfast, Italy and India. Concert appearances have taken him around the UK, US and Europe and includes performances with the LPO, the Royal Seville Symphony, and the St Petersburg Symphony. Darren is also a busy recitalist, creating concerts that defy genre and style.Read More »

David Gallo

David Gallo

Deep Ocean Explorer

David Gallo is an American oceanographer and Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - a preeminent, globally recognized scientific laboratory. For more than 25 years, David has been at the forefront of oceanic exploration, participating in and witnessing the development of new technologies and scientific discoveries that shape our view of planet earth. He has been described by TED as “an enthusiastic ambassador between the sea and those of us on dry land.” With more than 8 million views on his TED talk, “Underwater Astonishments” is among the top 3 most-viewed TED Talks to date.Read More »

David Rowan

David Rowan

Editor, WIRED UK magazine

When it comes to navigating the world of emerging tech, David Rowan is your go-to-guy. He is editor of the UK edition of WIRED magazine –which won 2009 Launch of the Year at the British Society of Magazine Editors Awards – and is an expert on a variety of different topics that he manages to connect together so well. He writes the monthly “Digital Life” column in GQ magazine, and the "Tech Traveller" column in Condé Nast Traveller.Read More »

dbi.young anitafrika

dbi.young anitafrika

dubpoet. monodramatist. educator

d'bi.young anitafrika, affectionately know as d'bi. is an internationally celebrated Jamaican dubpoet, monodramatist and educator whose socially-conscious performance art works have made an indelible mark upon the global psyche. After moving from Kingston Jamaica in 1993, she exploded onto the Canadian theatre scene in 2001 as the unbelievable storyteller in 'da kink in my hair' which played at London’s Hackney Empire Theatre in 2006 and has toured globally.Read More »

Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra

NYT best selling wellness author

New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra is acknowledged as one of the world's greatest leaders in the field of mind body medicine.Read More »

Deepak Ravindran

Deepak Ravindran

Entrepreneur

Deepak Ravindran is the founder and CEO of Innoz, which he started in his college dorm room in 2008 with 3 other college mates. Deepak left Kannur University,LBS College of Engineering,Kerala as a dropout with a novel idea of giving Internet to the offline world. Deepak was named one of the MIT Technology Review outstanding innovators under 35, for the year 2011. He is also an INK Fellow & TED Talent Search participant for 2011.Read More »

Deepti Naval

Deepti Naval

Actress, activist, artist, poet

Deepti Naval is an artiste in the true sense of the word. Deepti is an acclaimed Indian actress who migrated to the US for university. She debuted in the Hindi movie, 'Ek Baar Phir' (1979), and has acted in over 60 films, including 'Mirch Masala', 'Main Zinda Hoon', and more recently, 'Leela'. She wrote and directed 'Thodasa Aasmaan', a TV serial about women, produced a travel show, and made her directorial debut with 'Do Paise Ki Dhoop, Chaar Aane Ki Baarish'. 'Lamha-Lamha' was her first poetry compilation, followed by 'Black Wind and Other Poems'. Coming up is a poetry collection from wanderings in Ladakh. She runs the Vinod Pandit Charitable Trust, in memory of her late companion, for the education of the girl child. Untold StoryRead More »

Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers

Entrepreneur, programmer, student of life.

Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek Sivers created CD Baby in 1998. It became the largest seller of independent music online, with $100M in sales for 150,000 musicians. In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22M, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. He is a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, with over 5 million views of his talks. In 2011, he published a book which shot to #1 on all of its Amazon categories. Derek Sivers lives in Singapore, where he is creating his next company.Read More »

Dianna Cohen

Dianna Cohen

Visual Artist. Creative Advocacy Director, PPC

Los Angeles-based multi-media visual artist, painter and curator Dianna Cohen is best known for her two-dimensional and three-dimensional works using recycled plastic bags – sewn together – ranging from small hanging pieces to room-sized installations. Since graduating from UCLA she has shown work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in the USA, Europe, Australia, and Africa. Dianna Cohen is Creative Director & co-founder of Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance of individuals, organizations and businesses working together to stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals and the environment.Read More »

Dina Buchbinder Auron

Dina Buchbinder Auron

Director, Deport-es para Compartir

Dina Buchbinder Auron has introduced an innovative, action-oriented education model, called Deport-es para Compartir, to a Mexican education system that has long struggled with passivity and rigidity. Deport-es para Compartir empowers teachers from a variety of school settings to foster social and environmental awareness while also teaching values such as teamwork and fair play.Read More »

Dr Uma Ramakrishnan

Dr Uma Ramakrishnan

DNA Scientist

Uma uses genetic data to understand the history, present and potential future of populations. Her early research explored how choosiness for mates impacts genetic variation, and the relationships between African click-speaking hunter-gatherer groups. Uma now applies her research to wildlife, using non-invasive DNA sources (like poop!) to investigate tiger population sizes over the last 200 years, connectivity between populations, and how species came to the Indian subcontinent, given their recent arrival to Asia. She is a National Board for Wildlife member, Ramanujan fellow and DAE Outstanding Scientist.Read More »

Dr. Jakob van Zyl

Dr. Jakob van Zyl

Jet Propulsion Expert

Dr. Jakob van Zyl is the Associate Director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory responsible for Project Formulation and Strategy. He has more than 20 years of research experience in various aspects of satellite remote sensing. Read More »

Eames Demetrios

Eames Demetrios

Creator, Kymaerica and Kcymaerxthaere

Eames Demetrios is best known in the design world for his work as director of the Eames Office spearheading the successful re-discovery of the Charles and Ray Eames design heritage by new generations. The mission of the Eames Office is communicating, preserving and extending the work of Charles and Ray Eames. His current large-scale project, Kymaerxthaere, is a multi-pronged and ongoing work of multi-dimensional storytelling and has been underway for several years. The project can be found in stories set in bronze markers--like a novel where every page is in a different city. Kcymaerxthaere’s manifestations include writings, video, performances, images, installation, and limited edition prints. You can discover some of the stories in India in the small village of Sakad in the tribal area of the Madyha Pradesh. Demetrios looks forward to bringing more Kcymaerxthereal stories to India. He currently lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons.Read More »

Elora Hardy

Elora Hardy

Creative Director at Ibuku

Having spent the first fourteen years of her life in Bali and the following fourteen in the United States, Elora left her position as the sole print designer at Donna Karan International in New York, returning to Bali to found Ibuku, an international design/build team providing fully functional homes and furniture made from natural substances allowing the occupants to live in an authentic relationship with nature. Her key realization was that with the right nurturing, Asia's creative minds, skilled hands,growing global perspective and unique natural materials will provide the force for positive change in our global future.Read More »

Francesca Rosella

Francesca Rosella

Chief Creative Director, CuteCircuit

Francesca Rosella is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Director of CuteCircuit, a fashion company based in London pioneer in the field of Wearable Technology. Founded in 2004, CuteCircuit has introduced many ground breaking ideas to the world of fashion by creating new beauty and functionality through the use of smart textiles and micro-electronics. Working alongside Ryan Genz, CEO of CuteCircuit, Francesca has built the first fashion company that creates haute couture with LED illumination worn by international stars on the red carpet and that has been also the first to sell illuminated fashion using LEDs in leading stores like Selfridges in London.Read More »

Gayatri Ganjawalla

Gayatri Ganjawalla

Singer, musician

Gayatri Ganjawalla is a classically trained vocalist both in Carnatic and Hindustani styles and is currently training under the tutelage of Pt. Shri Babanrao Haldankar. She was the first Indian woman to play the leading role in the London West End musical The Far Pavilions where her acting and singing abilities received critical acclaim. Gayatri has sung for several Bollywood films and in regional languages. She travels extensively, either as a solo performer or with her husband, multiple award winner Kunal Ganjawalla. UNTOLD STORY: In school, Gayatri wanted to be an astrophysicist. Her high point was when she won a book on how to make a telescope. She was also a national level volleyball player but didn’t grow tall enough to continue the game.Read More »

George Mathew

George Mathew

Founder, Music for Life International, NYC

Singapore-born Indian conductor, George Mathew, founder and Artistic Director of MUSIC FOR LIFE INTERNATIONAL and UBUNTU-SHRUTI, has emerged as one of the leading forces in the classical music world bringing symphonic music to focus on global humanitarian issues and crises at the beginning of the 21st Century. In 2010-11 he made appearances in the US, India, Panama, Morocco and South Africa as conductor and ambassador for transformative action and awakening through music. www.music4lifeinternational.org He was a speaker at the inaugural INK Conference in 2010 and was thrilled by the array of inspiring, creative, humble, brilliant, warm, friendly people who are brought together at INK.Read More »

Gokul Chandra Das

Gokul Chandra Das

Dhak musician

Gokul Chandra Das is a dhak (a traditional percussion instrument from Bengal played during religious festivals) player whose music is an amalgamation of classical and folk. Gokul Das was the first dhaki to play at the Hollywood Bowl. Gokul Chandra Das is one of the few dhakis, if not the only one, to take the dhak mainstream and introduce this regional instrument and art to the world. Das comes from a traditional 'Dhaki' family.Read More »

Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das

Author, commentator, public intellectual

Gurcharan Das is an Indian author, commentator and public intellectual. He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma which interrogates the epic, Mahabharata and the international bestseller, India Unbound, a narrative account of India from Independence to the global information age.Read More »

Harish Hande

Harish Hande

Co-founder, SELCO India

Harish Hande co-founded SELCO-India with Neville Williams in 1995. Dr. Hande earned his Doctorate in energy engineering (solar specialty) at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell). He has an undergraduate degree in Energy Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Dr. Hande serves on the boards of many organizations, both national and international. Read More »

Harpal Singh

Harpal Singh

Healthcare revolutionary

The Mentor and Chairman Emeritus of one of India’s leading hospital chains, Fortis Healthcare, Harpal Singh is also the Founder Chairman of the Nanhi Chhaan Foundation, an initiative in support of the girl child and the environment. Harpal is also currently the Chairman of the Save the Children, India. He has chaired the second and third India Health Summit and delivered the prestigious ‘Friday Lecture’ at the Royal Institute of Great Britain on Integrating Global Healthcare.WEBSITEwww.nanhichhaan.comRead More »

HK Venkatram

HK Venkatram

Violinist

HK Venkatram is one of the most accomplished and sought after violinists in the Carnatic Music field. HKV also works for Intel Corporation as Director of Intel Architecture Group in India. He belongs to the rare creed in which he pursues two careers in parallel seeking excellence in both chosen fields. HKV has been performing solo concerts and also accompanying the top artistes of Carnatic Music for over three decades in India and abroad. He is known for his deep understanding of nuances of Carnatic Music and adherence to classicism. His playing is characterized by depth, knowledge, sincerity and maturity.Read More »

Itay Talgam

Itay Talgam

Conductor

Itay Talgam worked as a conductor with some of the world’s best musical ensembles and orchestras and assisted great Maestri such as Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado.Read More »

Jaaved Jaaferi

Jaaved Jaaferi

Actor, Comedian

Jaaved Jaaferi is an Indian actor, voice artist, dancer, comedian, impressionist known for his work in several Bollywood films and Indian television shows. Jaaferi has distinguished himself as one of India’s most versatile and popular entertainers with his flamboyance, quirky sense of humor and his incredible dancing ability. The son of legendary actor/ comedian Jagdeep, Jaaferi seemed destined for a career in showbiz. Read More »

James Cameron

James Cameron

Film maker, Inventor

James Cameron has many avatars that allow him to be a film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and inventor. His writing and directing work includes The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic and his return to feature films with Avatar, Cameron spent some years creating documentary films and also co-developing the digital 3-D Fusion Camera System. Cameron has also worked extensively in deep ocean exploration, diving to extreme depths with his own submersibles, robotics and camera systems.FILMS: Avatar, Aliens of the Deep, Ghosts of the Abyss, Titanic, Strange Days, True Lies, Terminator II: Judgment Day, The Abyss, Aliens, Rambo: First Blood Part II, The Terminator, Piranha II: The SpawningRead More »

Jason Wishnow

Jason Wishnow

filmmaker

Jason Wishnow is the filmmaker behind TEDTalks, the Peabody Award winning video series watched nearly a billion times (even in outer space). Wishnow works at the intersection of film and emerging technologies and has been called an “online-video virtuoso” (New York Times, 2009), the “enfant terrible of digital film” (The Guardian, 2000), and one of the ten most influential digital filmmakers of 1999 (RES Magazine). Prior to joining TED, Wishnow founded one of the first film websites, The New Venue, in the mid-’90s, an entire decade before YouTube.Read More »

Jeff Marx

Jeff Marx

co-creator/writer of Avenue Q

Best known as the co-creator and co-writer of the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q. Winner of three 2004 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Avenue Q became the 20th longest running show in Broadway history and it is still running in New York and all over the world.Read More »

Jennifer Aaker

Jennifer Aaker

Professor

A social psychologist and marketer, Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. She is widely published in the leading scholarly journals in psychology and marketing, and her work has been featured in a variety of media, including The Economist, NYTimes, WSJ, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Science. A sought-after teacher in the field of marketing, Professor Aaker teaches courses, including 'Designing Happiness', 'How to Tell a Story', 'Building Innovative Brands', and 'The Power of Social Technology'.Read More »

Jitish Kallat

Jitish Kallat

Artist

Mumbai artist Jitish Kallat’s work takes form in a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, site-specific installations, animation videos and photography. Jitish’s work often overlays disparate historical dates, everyday images and events into interconnected palimpsests and portrays themes like time, sustenance and mortality. Kallat’s work has been exhibited widely at museums and institutions including Tate Modern (London), Martin Gorpius Bau (Berlin) and the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern (Spain) to name just a few and has been a part of the Havana Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Asian Art Biennale, Curitiba Biennale, Guangzhou Triennale and the Kiev Biennale amongst many others.Read More »

John Frame

John Frame

Sculptor, filmmaker, composer

John Frame has been making sculpture in the Southern California area of the United States since the early 1980s; his work has been exhibited extensively in the US as well as in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan. From the beginning of his career, he has undertaken an in-depth exploration of the human condition. Those who review Frame's work frequently suggest that its appeal lies in his propensity to probe the deep questions of life without arriving at easy answers. One critic captures this tension thus: “In Frame's work the meaning eludes us while the search for meaning captivates us.”John twice has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and received the New Talent Award from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1995 he was awarded the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Individual Artist Fellowship. He received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle in 2009.Read More »

John Hardy

John Hardy

Designer, educator

Jewelry designer John Hardy co-founded the extraordinary Green School in Bali, where kids get a holistic and green education. At the Green School, students learn in open-air classrooms surrounded by acres of gardens that they tend; they learn to build with bamboo; and meanwhile they're being prepared for traditional British school exams. The centerpiece of the campus is the spiraling Heart of School, which may be called Asia's largest bamboo building.WEBSITEwww.greenschool.orgRead More »

John-Henry Harris

John-Henry Harris

Lego creative designer

John-Henry Harris is a British creative designer who has been living and working in Denmark for the past three years. His thought-provoking environmental and social design philosophies, displayed at the 2008 New Designers exhibition in London, won him a dream job innovating toys at LEGO, where his passion now lies in spreading the essence of Play worldwide. At a recent TED event in New York, John-Henry's motto "Play Hard, Work Better!" challenged corporate responsibility and social attitudes towards play at work, and he now hopes to broaden the way businesses think about innovation culture globally. UNTOLD STORY: John-Henry loves building ferocious creatures with big teeth and sharp claws and his 'Fiery Legend' Dragon set contains three models that can be built from the same set of bricks. This, along with some designer web-tips, aims to inspire children into believing that they really can create anything out of one selection of bricks.Read More »

Joi Barua

Joi Barua

musician

Joi Barua grew up in a sleepy town called Jorhat in Assam, the North East of India. He was gifted a violin by his father when he was four, and he fell in love with Music. The only music he has access to those days was a 30 minute friday slot on radio. His town had one piano, and no teachers, and his father had to cross the border and get him a keyboard from Bhutan. He has no formal training in singing, and is now making waves in the advertising, music, and film circuit in Mumbai.Read More »

Joichi Ito

Joichi Ito

director, MIT Media Lab

Joichi Ito is the Director of the MIT Media Lab. He is the Chair of Creative Commons, on the Board of The New York Times Company, on the Board of the MacArthur Foundation, on the Board of Trustees of The Knight Foundation, and co-founder and board member of Digital Garage an Internet company in Japan. He is on board of a number of non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation and WITNESS. He is a member of the IT Strategic Headquarters of the Japanese Cabinet. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Twitter, Six Apart, Wikia, Flickr, Last.fm, Kongregate, Fotonauts/Fotopedia, Kickstarter, Path, Pinwheel and other Internet companies.Read More »

Kalyan Varma

Kalyan Varma

Wildlife photographer

Kalyan Varma is a wildlife photographer and filmmaker specializing in environmental issues in India. He is a freelancer with many of the world’s leading magazines and channels like National Geographic and BBC. Varma has co-founded India Nature Watch, the largest online community of wildlife photographers, and also shares his knowledge of photography and wildlife with people in various platforms.Read More »

Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly

Digital visionary

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. From 1984 to 1990, Kelly was publisher and Editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He is also a charter board member of the Long Now Foundation, which is building a monumental clock to tick for 10,000 years. He is currently Editor and Publisher of the popular websites Cool Tools and The Quantified Self. His newest book What Technology Wants was released in October, 2010. UNTOLD STORY: Kevin's first job as a kid was at the local library. It was the only job he should have been fired for; instead of working he would hide in the stacks reading old magazines.Read More »

Krushnaa Patil

Krushnaa Patil

Mountain climber

In May 2009, Krushnaa Patil became the youngest Indian woman to successfully climb Mount Everest. Patil was also the first Indian woman to climb the highest peaks in Antarctica, South America and Europe, and has successfully climbed the highest peaks on six of the seven continents. Patil is currently pursuing her MA in Political Science from Pune University.Read More »

Kunal Bahl

Kunal Bahl

Co-founder & CEO, Snapdeal.com

With a business degree from Wharton, Kunal Bahl is the Co-Founder & CEO of India's largest online marketplace, Snapdeal.com. With the mission to create life-changing experiences through this platform, Kunal today has the largest online database with over 25 million members and 50,000 sellers. With millions of products from thousands of national, international and regional brands, Snapdeal.com has partnered with several global marquee investors to deliver products across the country to 5000+ cities and towns in India. What else keeps Kunal busy you may ask, he serves on Unilever’s Global Digital Advisory Board and the Board of Governors of The Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs.Read More »

Leonie Casanova

Leonie Casanova

Singer & Lyricist

Leonie Casanova is a London-based singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Zambia to an Italian father and Zambian mother, and schooled in Swaziland, England and the USA where she studied Economics and French Literature, Leonie’s colourful and almost nomadic background has deeply informed her approach to songwriting and to the intrinsic and essential story-telling element of this process. Leonie crosses and fuses genres and musical textures fluidly which allows exploration of what she calls “an endless work playground”. UNTOLD STORY: Leonie thinks her obsession with mangoes and her ability to sit and “observe the world” may have something to do with days spent climbing and sitting on mango trees as a child in Zambia!Read More »

Lisa Staprans

Lisa Staprans

Designer

Lisa Staprans has practiced interior design and product design for 20 years. She travels the world for inspiration and to learn and study other cultures, art, architecture and lifestyles. The book she is currently writing, The Soul of Design, features art, interior design, architecture, gardens, and other soulful spaces around the world.Lisa earned a Bachelors degree in Fine Art from the University of California at Berkeley, and later studied at the School of Visual Arts and Parson’s School of Design, both located in New York City. Her career in design began in New York City working for large and small firms. In 1992 she and her husband founded the company, Lisa Staprans Interior Design, currently known as Staprans Design. Lisa’s clients have homes in Virginia, New York, Utah, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, and many places in California.Read More »

Luis Dias

Luis Dias

Founder of Child’s Play Foundation

Dr. Luis Dias is a physician, musician, and founder of Child’s Play, a charity which works to bring classical music to underprivileged children in India. Child’s Play is inspired by El Sistema, a Venezuelan initiative that promotes the collective practice of music and music education as a means of social change and empowerment. The creation of Child’s Play was triggered by the stupendous performances of two orchestras, both made up of underprivileged youth from separate corners of the globe, at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2007.Read More »

Luke Iseman

Luke Iseman

Inventor

Luke is chief technology officer and cofounder of Soil IQ, a wireless soil sensor for small gardens and farms, which helps regular people grow their own produce. He is passionate about using open source hardware and the physical computing revolution to build a more sustainable world. He has invented an automated gardening computer, built and managed a fleet of 25 pedicabs, and written a book about travelling the world. His projects have been covered by publications like Make Magazine, Wired, Treehugger and TechCrunch.Read More »

Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry

Cartoonist

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. Read More »

Madhumita Halder

Madhumita Halder

Educator, Entrepreneur

Madhumita Halder is the founder of MadRat Games, creators of the World’s first Indian Language word game – Aksharit (www.aksharit.com). She graduated in Computer Science from IIT Bombay and being an artist at heart, worked for a FX studio. However her creative energies not finding room for expression in the corporate world, she chose to work with children. She subsequently taught middle school children at an alternate education center for 4 years.Read More »

Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman

Illustrator Extraordinaire

Maira Kalman is an author/illustrator who travels the world and depicts her experiences. She creates articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker and numerous other publications. She is the author of over twenty books for adults and children.Read More »

Malavika Sarukkai

Malavika Sarukkai

Classical Dancer Choreographer

Malavika Sarukkai is a dancer and choreographer. Her dance is described as intense, extraordinary and luminous and helps distinguish her form other dancers. She is acclaimed globally for her creative dance choreographies, which transport the viewer to the heart beat of dance, taking dance beyond specific geographies.Read More »

Mami Varte

Mami Varte

Singer

Mami is a well-known singer in Mizoram. Her debut album, Damlai Par, released in 2007, was rated as the top selling album of the year and led to a hat-trick of awards at the Mizoram Music Awards; Best Female Singer, Best Music Video and Song of the Year for the title track. Her following three singles reached the top 10 leading to another prestigious MMA in 2008. Mami recently released her new music video Hmangaihna Vanduai Maw with her second album to follow next year. UNTOLD STORY: I was recently invited to a school year function, I had a television appearance later on in the evening, so, feeling guilty, I made my excuses and left early, telling them to be sure to watch the telecast live on local cable that night. I got home, changed, did my make-up and waited to be collected, and waited, and waited... Eventually, I called them. The date was for the following week! I was totally embarrassed - the worst part is that when my mom got home - her advice was "Drink a glass of water and sleep on it!!"Read More »

Mansukhbhai Prajapati

Mansukhbhai Prajapati

Inventor

Mansukhbhai R Prajapati was born in Nichimandal village in Gujarat in a family of potters and terracotta craftsmen. Being the eldest among four siblings, he became the helmsman of his family and its craft legacy. Despite financial constraints, Mansukhbhai's parents managed to educate him till high school. Mansukhbhai has developed an entire range of earthen products for daily use in the kitchen. These products include water filters, refrigerators, hot plates, cooker and other such items of daily use.Read More »

Marc Koska

Marc Koska

Inventor

The alarm bells first rang back in 1984 for Marc when he read a newspaper article predicting the spread of HIV through re-using medical syringes. Appalled at the prospect of such an avoidable catastrophe, Marc decided to do something about it. Some 26 years later his solution the K1, an Auto Disable (AD) syringe, not only physically prevents re-use, but can be manufactured inexpensively, by using existing machinery and is now under license to 14 global manufacturers. Conservative estimates credit Marc with more than five million lives saved and 10 million diseases prevented. In 2006, after realizing that simply manufacturing a safe product was not enough, he identified a gap in the market between producing a product that would save lives and a lack of knowledge of the benefits such a product can bring. He established The SafePoint Trust, a UK based not-for-profit, that produces hard-hitting, public information films. Marc now spends all his time working with SafePoint lobbying for legislation change at government level, spreading public awareness and ensuring adequate healthcare worker training is in force to complete the changeover to a safe healthcare system. WEBSITE: www.marckoska.com, www.safepointtrust.orgRead More »

Mark Magidson

Mark Magidson

Visionary Filmmaker

An entrepreneur, inventor and industrial designer with a diverse technical background, Mark is a filmmaker who has undertaken artistic projects that are epic in scale, entail great technical complexity and innovation, and transcend an ordinary view of the world. Producer, co-writer, co-editor of award winning films Chronos (1985), Baraka (1992), and Samsara (2012), he has taken crews to over 50 countries in search of profound and one of a kind imagery.Read More »

Mark Foster Gage

Mark Foster Gage

Architect

Mark Foster Gage is a recognized innovator in the fields of architecture and design. His pioneering designs combining architectural practice with digital technologies, advanced materials, and emerging media platforms have been exhibited in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and featured in the press such as Vogue, Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times, USA Today, PBS and MTV.Read More »

Mussaret Zaidi

Mussaret Zaidi

Public health expert, researcher

Dr. Mussaret Zaidi heads the research laboratory at the Hospital Regional de Alta Especialidad in Yucatan, Mexico. During the last decade, she has studied anti-microbial usage in animals and the human health impact of anti-microbial-resistant bacteria in the food chain and environment.Read More »

Nam Do

Nam Do

Serial tech entrepreneur

Prior to forming Emotiv, Nam Do co-founded and ran SASme, a pioneer in providing SMPP platforms to telecommunication carriers and content aggregators in Australia and Asia. In 1995, Nam won one of Vietnam’s most prestigious study abroad scholarships. Nam came to Australia’s RMIT University under a full merit scholarship, and started his first technology company in his final year. A regular guest-lecturer at Harvard Business School, HAAS Business School and Stanford University, in 2007, Nam was voted as one of Australia’s Top 10 Digital Entrepreneurs. UNTOLD STORY: In 2003, Nam Do had dinner with Professor Allan Snyder FRS. They discussed at length about Allan’s work on non-conscious mind with autistic savants. At 4am, Nam told Allan, “you know what, the last 20 years have been the era for DSP (digital signal processing), the next 20 years will be the era for ESP (emotional signal processing)”. Allan loved it and that’s how Emotiv was formed.Read More »

Nameet MVS

Nameet MVS

Horticulturist

Japanese Mizuna, exotic lettuces, and rare peppers from the Peruvian Andes – all grown locally in Karnataka, India? Yes, this is actually happening, thanks to Nameet MVS, co-founder of First Agro, India’s first commercial grower organization with Zero Pesticide™ fresh produce. After leaving his full-time job as a pilot and flying instructor in 2011, Nameet , his brothers Naveen MV and KN Prasad came together to pursue their passion for healthy fresh produce.Read More »

Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte

CEO of Duarte Design, author

Since 1988, Nancy Duarte’s firm has created over a quarter of a million presentations. As one of the largest woman-owned businesses in Silicon Valley, her experience working with global companies and thought leaders has influenced the perception of some of the world’s most valuable brands and many of humanity’s common causes. Fascinated by presentations as the most powerful persuasive medium, Duarte determined to crack the code on why some presentations are riveting and others are unbearable. In Fall 2010 she released Resonate—Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences which identifies hidden story structures inherent in great communication.Read More »

Nancy Silberkleit

Nancy Silberkleit

Businesswoman

Nancy Silberkleit, daughter-in-law of Louis H. Silberkleit one of the founders of Archie Comics Publications, stepped into her role as Co-CEO of the company in 2009 with a vision that the comic book as a graphic novel is a valuable tool for developing literacy among first-time readers and instilling a love of reading for everyone. As a former public school educator, homemaker and mother, she knows the importance of learning to read and coined a personal motto that “Children+Comic Books=Reading, Knowledge and Confidence.”Read More »

Nigel Osborne

Nigel Osborne

Composer, Naciketa

Nikhilesh Das

Rural innovator

Nikhilesh Das was awarded the fifth National Grassroots Innovation Award by the President of India, Smt Pratibha Patil, for his innovative research on controlling oil pollution in water. A student of Cotton College (BSc in Physics), Das aims to pursue a career in nuclear physics and bring the spirit of scientific innovation to students across India.Read More »

Nitin Ron

Nitin Ron

Neonatologist, mountaineer

I am a neonatologist (baby doctor!) and love high altitude trekking and mountaineering. I am an associate professor of pediatrics at New York Methodist Hospital, and love to use innovative methods to teach medical students. I am constantly humbled and amazed by what love and compassion can do to heal little premature and sick babies! I have also been leading a research project in the Himalayas, including the Mt. Everest region, involving ultrasound of the eye(optic nerve) and the body, to predict mountain sickness, and have also looked at the effect of meditation in acclimatizing the body to high altitude. I constantly encourage my students to break the rules, rearrange the paradigms with which they run their lives, and therefore to re-invent themselves every moment! I also volunteer as an art guide at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York City, and this is a reminder to me that medicine is so much of an art as well as a science!Read More »

Oikyotaan

Oikyotaan

Folk music platform

Oikyotaan, a Contemporary Folk Platform founded by, Biswasjit “Bonnie” Chakraborty, aims at performing, archiving and spreading the infectious philosophy and melody of Indian Folk Traditions. The sound is rooted in the rhythm and melody of Indian folk music, with a special emphasis on Baul music from Bengal. Their foundation of sound is created, using an equal set of unique components from Indian Folk-Classical and other forms of Contemporary music. The magic of pulsating rhythms, weaving themselves together with soul-stirring melodies and spinning a web of lyrical arrangements.Read More »

Prakash Amte

Prakash Amte

Social activist

Magsaysay Awardee Prakash Amte runs Lok Biradari Prakalp to provide community services to tribal people in rural Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. The project has grown into a hospital, residential school and an orphanage for injured wild animals.Read More »

Prakriti Dutta

Prakriti Dutta

Dhrupad Singer, Naciketa

Prakriti Dutta is an internationally acclaimed dhrupad singer .She is a performer, actor and composer. After securing first position in M.A from Rabindra Bharati university, India, she had received a MSc degree in Music in the community from University of Edinburg and honed her skill as an music therapist and community musician .She was under the tutelage of Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar in his dhrupad gurukul in Mumbai. Recently she has founded a performing art company ‘Sound Space’ for sound, movement and arts in her hometown Kolkata. It is an organically designed amphitheatre which promotes creative minds and art in South of Kolkata. Presently her work is divided between two cities Kolkata and London. She is actively associates with a London based music theatre company ‘Opera Circus’ in their production Naciketa based on Upanishad.Read More »

Raghava KK

Raghava KK

Artist

Raghava KK is a renowned Indian artist and a tech entrepreneur, named by CNN as one of 10 most remarkable people in 2010. Read More »

Raghu Dixit

Raghu Dixit

Singer, composer

Raghu Dixit is a unique and popular composer, song-writer & singer from India. His music is a seamless amalgamation of ethnic music and styles from across the world. His lyrics, though intense, are simple and speak about every common man’s emotions and experiences. Inserting Indian ethnic folk, Sufi and classical music phrases cleverly into his songs, Raghu’s singing style can be described as unique. Being a completely self- taught guitarist and singer, his vocal range and versatility has been appreciated with awe and has become one of the most recognizable voices in the country! UNTOLD STORY: Raghu is a gold medalist in Masters in Microbiology from the prestigious University of Mysore and a professionally qualified Indian classical dancer.Read More »

Rajika Puri

Rajika Puri

Danced storyteller, choreographer, writer

Rajika Puri is an exponent of two forms of Indian dance - Bharatanatyam and Odissi – which for several years she performed internationally in solo recital (including a command performance for the President of Mexico). After playing ‘Narrator/goddess Kali’ in The Transposed Heads directed by Julie Taymor (Lincoln Center Theater, ’86), she developed a form of danced storytelling in which she accompanies her dances with songs, chants, vocalized rhythmic syllables, and a narrative in English. An evening of such stories, commissioned by the Rubin Museum of Art, was also presented off-Broadway: Devi-Malika: a garland of danced stories on the feminine divine in India (Duke on 42nd, ’08).Read More »

Ramachandra Budihal

Ramachandra Budihal

Heritage Imagineer

A software architect at Wipro Technologies, Bangalore, with geek credentials going back two decades, Ramachandra Budihal drew from his work in digital image processing and multimedia to co-found the Mahabharata Samshodhana Pratishthanam (Mahabharata Research Foundation), a non-profit organisation on a mission to digitize and protect works of Indian heritage and make them relevant to the contemporary society. One of the foundation's projects focuses on the Mahabharata, India's most famous epic. Budihal is helping develop and compile an encyclopedia of the Mahabharata - 18 volumes - that's set to debut in 2012. With the foundation, he also devised and built Samanveshak, a digital document-scanning laboratory housed in a bus with state-of-the-art scanners, satcoms and telepresence. To date, the team has digitised and documented more than one million folios of ancient medical manuscripts from remote areas in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.Ramachandra is also recepient of a presidential honour, 'Maharishi Badrayan Vyas Samman' (2007), conferred by then President of India Dr Abdul Kalam, in recognition of his breakthrough work in the area of cultural heritage preservation and promotion using technology.Read More »

Ramesh Rao

Ramesh Rao

Director, Calit2 UCSD

Named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his leadership in wireless communications, Dr. Ramesh Rao is a faculty member at UC San Diego and Director of the Qualcomm Institute (QI), UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Prior to QI (Calit2), Professor Rao was also the Director of UCSD's Center for Wireless Communications (CWC). Dr. Rao is involved on a day-to-day basis with a wide variety of research initiatives at QI. He leads several major interdisciplinary and collaborative projects and has been a PI on dozens of federal-, state-, foundation- and industry-funded grants. Among his most recent honors and distinctions, he received a 2011 Casa Familiar Abrazo Award for engagement with underprivileged area of San Diego.Read More »

Ramesh Raskar

Ramesh Raskar

Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab

Ramesh Raskar is an Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab. Ramesh Raskar joined the Media Lab from Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in 2008 as head of the Lab’s Camera Culture research group. His research interests span the fields of computational photography, inverse problems in imaging and human-computer interaction. Recent projects and inventions include transient imaging to look around a corner, a next generation CAT-Scan machine, imperceptible markers for motion capture (Prakash), long distance barcodes (Bokode), touch+hover 3D interaction displays (BiDi screen), low-cost eye care devices (Netra,Catra), new theoretical models to augment light fields (ALF) to represent wave phenomena and algebraic rank constraints for 3D displays(HR3D).Read More »

Rick Smolan

Rick Smolan

Photojournalist, Producer

Rick is a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer best known as the creator of the 'Day in the Life' book series. As CEO of Against All Odds Productions (which Fortune describes “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America), Rick's global crowd-sourced photography projects (which also utilize the skills of hundreds of the world’s leading photographers), combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. His projects each generate hundreds of millions of media impressions and have been featured on the covers of Fortune, Time, and Newsweek. Untold Story Read More »

Rives

Rives

Poet, multi-media artist

Rives is a poet and multi-media artist from Los Angeles, who applies new technologies to ancient art forms. He has appeared on Romanian billboards, in Scottish pubs and inside a 1964 Cadillac with a supermodel for the Bravo TV special Ironic Iconic America. He is the co-host of the annual TEDActive conference and his hobby is rooftops. Offstage, Rives designs and writes pop-up books. He has appeared on multiple seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and was a member of the Def Poetry international tour group. Untold StoryRead More »

Robert Vijay Gupta

Robert Vijay Gupta

Musical activist, violinist

Violinist Robert Vijay Gupta joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in June 2007 at the age of 19.Read More »

Roger Fisk

Roger Fisk

Presidential PR Guru

Roger Fisk has had a key "behind the scenes role" in President Obama’s organization since then-Senator Obama announced his run for president in February 2007. He has seen from the beginning the development of cutting-edge organizing strategies, the application of agile on-line organizing tools, and a truly innovative, thoroughly modern mobilization of social media. With 6 months of service on the President’s successful 2012 re-election, Roger has worked with all of those tools as they were perfected in the second campaign. Read More »

Ruchi Sanghvi

Ruchi Sanghvi

Entrepreneur, technologist

Ruchi is the founder and CEO of Cove - a company she started with other early ex-Facebookers. Prior to starting her own company, Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook.Read More »

Sabriye Tenberken

Sabriye Tenberken

Co-founder of Kanthari, Social change agent

Coming from the margins of society, Sabriye Tenberken developed an intrinsic interest to create ethical social change. She studied Tibetology/Central Asian Sciences at Bonn University. Travelling on horseback through the Himalayas she discovered that Tibetans who in majority are Buddhists have a stigma against people with disabilities. Especially blindness is seen as a punishment for something you have done in your previous life. Accordingly blind children are often neglected, locked away in dark rooms or sent to the streets to beg for money. Experiencing this situation inspired Sabriye to start the first school for the blind in Tibet. This school formed the foundation of Braille Without Borders, an organization that empowers blind people to take their lives in their own hands. In 2005 she co- founded Kanthari in Kerala. Kanthari fosters participants from all over the world, who, like Sabriye, have a passion to make the world a better place and strength to be forces of good rather than victims of circumstance. Sabriye is the driving force behind the academic program.Read More »

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Mystic

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is the founder of Isha Foundation, which runs yoga centres, charitable outreach and green initiatives around the world. Isha Foundation is a non-religious, non-profit organization that addresses all aspects of human well-being from yoga practice to social justice and the well being of the planet. Sadhguru has spoken at the World Economic Forum three times, most recently in 2007, addressing issues ranging from diplomacy to economic development, education and the environment. He has also served as a delegate to the United Nations Millennium Peace Summit and the World Peace Congress.Read More »

Sandeep Divekar

Sandeep Divekar

Serial Technology Entrepreneur

Sandeep Divekar is GM of Global Technology Initiatives at Reliance MediaWorks. He is responsible for commercializing the company's Academy Award winning image processing and film restoration technology and for finding new application areas for the technology. Prior to joining Reliance Mediaworks, Sandeep Divekar set up a South Asian IPTV network for Neulion Inc. which involved negotiating contracts with South Asian television channels, setting up satellite capture teleports in Nepal and India, market research, designing packaging and pricing and launched the network to consumers in Canada and the US.Read More »

Satya Hinduja

Satya Hinduja

Sound Artist

Satya's 9 year long journey has ranged from scoring for Indian films to collaborating with Indian artists and musicians. While her artistic footprint has evolved from eastern traditional to western electronica, Satya's spiritual vision is moulded by a blend of the two. Her label, Tabula Rasa, hopes to play a key role in revolutionizing the electronica movement.Read More »

Scott Cook

Scott Cook

Financial Software Maven

Scott Cook's was born and raised in an LA suburb after his parents emigrated from Wisconsin. Scott was 'nerdy' as a kid and even programmed his school district's one computer. Scott attended USC and later went to Harvard Business School.Read More »

Shamim Sarif

Shamim Sarif

Filmmaker, author

Writer/director Shamim Sarif is an equally successful novelist (the Pendleton May First Novel Award, Betty Trask Award), screenwriter, and feature film director. Her two feature films have won over 30 international awards. She has published many short stories and has built a successful career in script editing and screenplay adaptation. An accomplished speaker who has spoken at TED events in London, Jerusalem and India, Shamim has also directed music videos and written lyrics for recorded songs. In 2008, Shamim received an AfterEllen Visibility Award as International Lesbian/Bi Woman of the Year. With her partner and producer on her films, Hanan Kattan, she runs the Enlightenment group of companies, based in London, and the Sarif-Kattan Foundation, focused on empowering and educating women and children.Read More »

Shankar Tucker

Shankar Tucker

Clarinetist, composer

Shankar Tucker is an American-born clarinetist and composer who creates music that explores contemporary and traditional Indian sounds. He collaborates with other musicians to represent new generation Indian artists - bringing their music to an internationally and culturally diverse audience, both on- and offline.Read More »

Shantanu Moitra

Shantanu Moitra

Music director, composer

Folk music is rapidly disappearing from mainstream music, but never fear! Shantanu Moitra is a man on a mission to save folk musical traditions. Shantanu is a renowned Indian music composer and restorationist. With a father as an accomplished sarod player and his mother as a talented artist, creativity naturally runs through his veins. He has worked on many landmark Bollywood films, including "Parineeta", "3 Idiots", and "Madras Cafe".Read More »

Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar

Social psychologist, professor

Sheena Iyengar looks deeply at choosing and has discovered many surprising things about it. For instance, her famous "jam study," done while she was a grad student, quantified a counterintuitive truth about decisionmaking -- that when we're presented with too many choices, like 24 varieties of jam, we tend not to choose anything at all. (This and subsequent, equally ingenious experiments have provided rich material for Malcolm Gladwell and other pop chroniclers of business and the human psyche.)Read More »

Shilo Shiv Suleman

Shilo Shiv Suleman

Artist

Shilo Shiv Suleman is an Indian illustrator, animator and visual artist based in the city of Bangalore. Her primary area of interest is visual storytelling through multiple mediums. She illustrated her first book for children at the age of 16 and has illustrated eight others since with some of the most well known publishing houses in India. She has also been actively involved in setting up community art projects and collectives that get people to appreciate and create street art in their surroundings as well as use art and design to bring socially relevant issues in India to the forefront.Read More »

Shirin Juwaley

Shirin Juwaley

Human rights activist

An acid attack survivor herself, Shirin started the Palash Foundation to address social reintegration and livelihoods for people with disfigurement. In 1998, her husband threw acid on her after she requested divorce. Read More »

Shruti Haasan

Shruti Haasan

Actress, singer

Shruti Haasan is an Indian actress, singer and music composer who works in the South Indian film industry and Bollywood. She sang her first song at the age of six and has continued her stint in music through her work as a singer in Indian languages. She trained in Hindustani classical music and studied at the Musicians Institute in California.Read More »

Shwetal Patel

Shwetal Patel

Officer, Kochi Muziris Biennale

Born in India, Shwetal A. Patel spent his childhood in Lusaka, Zambia, migrating to the U.K when he was nine years old. During his time in the U.K, Patel studied Economics at the University of London, graduating in 2001 whilst working in the fields of music, fashion, film & art in the burgeoning artistic scene of East London. Patel chose Florence, Italy as a base to live and work for 4 years and in 2010 was invited to Mumbai to develop a project to create India's first contemporary art biennial; an artist led initiative spearheaded by the Kochi Biennale Foundation.Read More »

Shyamrao Kulkarni

Shyamrao Kulkarni

Hindustani music guru

Pandit Shyamrao Kulkarni is a doyen of North Indian Classical Music. He is a vocalist of the highest caliber, whose voice provides an effortless rendition of his musical thoughts as he creates beautiful expositions of various raagas.Read More »

Simon Lewis

Simon Lewis

Film producer, author

Simon Lewis is a film and television producer and author. After earning law degrees from Christ’s College Cambridge and Boalt Hall, Berkeley, Lewis moved to Los Angeles where his Hollywood experience includes managing writers, directors and stars as well as producing Look Who’s Talking (1989), The Chocolate War (1988), the Emmy award-winning international co-production for HBO and ITV Central Age Old Friends/A Month of Sundays (1988), and variety specials starring Howie Mandel.Read More »

Sophie Morgan

Sophie Morgan

Designer & activist

Sophie Morgan was born in the south of England, then educated in Scotland, before she returned to study at the University in London, where she now lives and works managing her own company. She is a product designer, a television presenter, a model, a campaigner, an artist and, as a result of a car accident seven years ago, a paraplegic wheelchair bound for life. Her work is centered on changing how disability is perceived and considered within society.Read More »

Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister

Designer

Stefan Sagmeister is one of the most celebrated figures in the world of visual communication. He has won two Grammy Awards for his work in album covers and packaging design. Sagmeister & Walsh produces work that stands out among mediums and disciplines of graphic design.Read More »

Sunil Thankamushy

Sunil Thankamushy

Creative Director Virtual Worlds

Sunil Thankamushy is a US-based, sixteen-year veteran of the video game industry who was part of the core teams that developed highly acclaimed, successful video game franchises, such as as Call of Duty™, Finest Hour™, and Medal of Honor™.Read More »

Sunitha Krishnan

Sunitha Krishnan

Anti-trafficking crusader

Sunitha Krishnan, Founder and Director of Prajwala, or “an eternal flame”, is an eminent anti-trafficking activist internationally known for her fight against girl child trafficking for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. A mental health professional, she has done extensive research and is essentially a field practitioner. Prajwala runs 17 schools throughout Andhra Pradesh, India, for 6,000 children and has rescued more than 4,200 women from prostitution, 2,100 of whom Krishnan personally liberated.Read More »

Susan Lim

Susan Lim

Pioneer liver transplant surgeon

Dr. Susan Lim performed the first successful cadaveric liver transplant for Singapore and Asia in 1990. She is also widely known as the ‘Spirit of the Century’, an Award conferred upon her by the Singapore public in a national contest held to identify the role model for the 21st century. Read More »

Swanand Kirkire

Swanand Kirkire

Writer, song-writer, actor, director

Swanand Kirkire has many strings to his bow, he is a writer, song-writer, actor, playwright and director in the Hindi film industry. Graduating from the National School of Drama in 1996 he soon moved into the world of television, and then, in 2003, progressed to film, making his debut as a lyricist & singer with Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi.Read More »

Tania Luna

entrepreneur. educator.

Tania Luna loves pit bulls and elephants. She also teaches psychology, writes non-fiction and fiction, helps companies increase employee and customer happiness, and is CEO of a very surprising company. She moved to the U.S. from Ukraine as a child, and has been living in New York City ever since - a place she adores for its unpredictability.Read More »

Tod Machover

Tod Machover

Musical Innovator

Tod Machover is head of MIT Media Lab's Opera of the Future group. An influential composer, he has been praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries; his music has been performed and commissioned by some of the world's most important performers and ensembles. In 1995, he received a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres," one of France's highest cultural honors, and in 1998 he was awarded the first DigiGlobe Prize from the German government. He has composed five operas and is the inventor of Hyperinstruments, a technology that uses smart computers to augment virtuosity. Hyperinstruments have been used by performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, Prince, and Peter Gabriel. Machover is also the creator of the Toy Symphony, an international music performance and education project. His research group is currently examining ways to use music in therapy for emotionally and physically challenged individuals.Read More »

Tom Wujec

Tom Wujec

Design innovator

Tom Wujec is a pioneer in business visualization, the emerging practice of using images, sketches and data-driven infographics to help teams solve complex problems. Tom’s work has been featured in many international conferences, such as TED, Pop!Tech and the Fortune Innovation Summit. Tom is also the author of three books on creative thinking and is a highly sought after international speaker, delivering visually rich innovation keynotes, workshops and knowledge maps. He has brought several software applications to market, including Autodesk SketchBook Pro, PortfolioWall, and Maya which won an Academy Award for its contribution to the film industry. Tom has worked as a creative director, writer and animator, has designed dozens of museum exhibits, and lives in Toronto with his wife and two children. BOOKS: Five Star Mind, Pumping Ions, Return on ImaginationRead More »

Ugesh Sarcar

Ugesh Sarcar

Magician

Ugesh Sarcar is India's first and only contemporary and revered street magician. Ugesh was trained in the art of magic under the stewardship of his father – the "Living Legend" Prof. M. C. Sarcar. Thereafter, "Ugesh Sarcar's 3rd Degree," his first national TV appearance, became an instant hit and the highest rated show for the channel in over 3 years. There has been no looking back ever since, and his performances have won him accolades the world over.Read More »

Usha Arunachalam

Usha Arunachalam

biotechnologist. Hindustani vocalist.

Dr. Usha Arunachalam is a biotechnologist with over 20 years of business experience with biotech companies, especially early-staged biotechnology companies. She currently consults for IndUS Pharmaceuticals, an India-US cross border biotechnology company.Read More »

Usha Uthup

Usha Uthup

The Voice

For over 44 years now, Usha Uthup has spread a message of love and unity, peace and harmony, tolerance and integrity, and happiness – through music. From discotheques to concerts, across India and the World, she has addressed the youth about the values of music that makes us human. She lives as she believes, presenting even the most contemporary songs dressed in traditional attire projecting the fact that India is a true melting pot of cultures, with its own distinctive cultural identity.Read More »

Varun Agarwal

Varun Agarwal

Media/Merchandise Maverick

Varun Agarwal is a 25 years old filmmaker, entrepreneur and a bestselling author. He is the co-founder of Alma Mater, India's biggest college apparel/memorabilia company, author of bestseller 'How I braved Anu Aunty & Co-founded A Million Dollar Company', and also the co-founder of Reticular, a social media marketing firm. The pursuit of his interests brought about collaborations with A.R. Rahman, Preity Zinta, and many others. Read More »

Vidya Shah

Vidya Shah

Musician, singer, composer, producer

Born into a family with a rich musical heritage, Vidya Shah is a vocalist who has trained in both North and South Indian musical traditions. Blessed with a rich and captivating voice, she has performed at national and international fora, including the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C, Asia Society in New York, Assilah Arts Festival in Morroco, The Kala Utsav in Singapore, the Humbolt Forum, Berlin, Germany and the Schaffhauser Jazz Festival, Switzerland. Vidya conducts workshops on music appreciation and spiritual traditions in Indian music.Read More »

Vikram Bhaskaran

Vikram Bhaskaran

Co-founder, Samosapedia

Vikram Bhaskaran is the CEO and Co-Founder of Samosa Media whose flagship product is Samosapedia: The Definitive Guide to South Asian Lingo.Read More »

Vikram Gandhi

Vikram Gandhi

Filmmaker

Vikram Gandhi is the award-winning director and star of Kumaré, a film in which he impersonates a wise guru from the East and starts a following of real people in the West. Kumaré won the Audience Award at SXSW Film Festival in 2011 and was released theatrically in North America in 2012. Vikram lives in New York and is developing his next feature film.Read More »

Vinay Venkatraman

Vinay Venkatraman

Designer. Entrepreneur. Innovator.

Vinay Venkatraman is the co-founder and partner at CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design). Vinay helps shape the strategy and content for CIID through consulting, teaching and research lead initiatives. He is trained as product & interaction designer in India and Italy. His works in the past have spanned design of consumer products, software and film visual effects. He currently spends his time between creating new education curriculums, shaping policy initiatives for the Danish government and consulting large global companies on innovation around new product experiences and design strategy.Read More »

Vineet Singal

Vineet Singal

Executive Director, 100KCheeks campaign

Named by The Huffington Post as one of the "Top 10 Changemakers Under 40", Vineet Singal is a senior at Stanford University and leads 100KCheeks, an initiative to register 100,000 new bone marrow donors using the power of personal stories and social media.In working closely with Professor Jennifer Aaker at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a team of 12 dedicated Stanford students, Vineet helped 100KCheeks reach its goal in 1 year. Vineet is currently leading efforts to register a million bone marrow donors worldwide in 2012 and jumpstart the creation of national marrow registries in countries like India and Indonesia. Vineet wants to use his skills as a social entrepreneur and future physician to fight for greater access to quality and affordable healthcare for the underserved. His resolve solidified in Galveston, TX during the fall of 2009, when he took a leave of absence from Stanford to volunteer full time at St. Vincent’s free clinic. Back at Stanford, Vineet co-founded Anjna, a national nonprofit organization that aims to utilize technology at free clinics. Vineet helped build a network of 250+ undergraduates, medical students and faculty and is leading efforts to create health education programs at free clinics in high need areas nationwide, in addition to conducting groundbreaking pilot studies on utilizing interactive, tablet based education and SMS technology at clinics in the bay area. Read More »

Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa

Academic, Researcher, Writer, Entrepreneur

Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University. He is author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”—which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and ” Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology”—which documents the struggles and triumphs of women. He was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as Top 100 Global Thinker in 2012. In 2013, TIME Magazine listed him as one of The 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.Read More »

Will Travis

Will Travis

Creative entrepreneur

Will Travis is a leader of infectious passion, drive and tremendous insight, gained from leading creative agency ATTIK, which he helped expand into London, New York, San Francisco and Sydney, and most recently with the US division of the world’s largest agency Dentsu, where he held the post of CEO of Dentsu America. A long-term creative entrepreneur, with a hell-bent focus on creating unique brand experiences with the energy to deliver.Read More »

William Pennell Rock

William Pennell Rock

Social Anthropologist

William Pennell Rock developed ORIGINS, a methodology for presenting insight into self-development and realization in workshops and performing arts. He began his professional career as a child actor appearing on television and theater. Read More »

Yann Vasnier

Yann Vasnier

Perfumer

Yann Vasnier was born in Brittany, France and from an early age he was drawn to appreciate the nuances of fragrances. He trained as a perfumer at ISIPCA, the prestigious Versailles perfumery school and he graduated Valedictorian in 1999. During his studies, Yann also worked as a trainee perfumer for Quest International in Paris. Upon graduating, he was offered a position as a junior perfumer with the Fine Fragrance team in Paris, trained by Francoise Caron. In 2001, Yann was the recipient of the International Young Perfumer Award. In July 2003, Yann joined the Quest New York as a perfumer and in 2007 joined Givaudan. Read More »